Sarty's Poem

narrative points of view, namely both that of Sarty and that of a third person narrator. For instance, Sarty’s naivete is clear when, in his mind, he underestimates his father’s character, thinking that he has become “what maybe he couldn’t help but be” (Faulkner 11), while also, after his father’s death, subscribing to an idealized version of him, as the “brave” warrior of “Colonel Sartoris’ cav’ry” (24). Sarty’s latter perception of his father is immediately rendered invalid as it is followed by the omniscient narrator’s revelation that his father was another common sinner, who went to the Civil War “for booty”, and with “fidelity to no man” (25). Faulkner’s stylistically self-conscious ambivalence as suggested through different perceptions

Huck’s moral ambiguity is intimated when, for example, he underhandedly dodges paying for the circus performance mentioned above, self deceptively rationalizing his act as precaution against senselessly “wasting” money (162), as well as he is somewhat complicit in the king and the duke’s deception of pretending to by relatives of a recently defunct wealthy man in order to lay their hands on their supposedly rightful fortune, either because he is motivated to dissemble merely by a sense self-preservation due to fear for them, or due to partly being enticed by the potential monetary gains of such deception. With the latter being a plausible interpretation, Huck the idea of the inevitability of a loss one’s innocence becomes more substantial in the text. This ideological view, however, can be more sensibly argued over in view of Huck’s participation, albeit reluctant, in Tom Sawyer’s, not physically, yet deeply sadistic act of tormenting the imprisoned Jim, turning his confinement into a puerile game of personal entertainment. Although Huck is unaware of Jim having already become a freed slave, unlike Tom, his partaking in this arguably virtual minstrel show, as well as its ominously being the final interaction between Huck and Jim, eclipsing other moments where Huck has certain epiphanies about the latter’s humanity, and its place toward the end of the novel in general, all cast a pall of ambiguity over Huck’s character, thus giving rise to this question of one’s ability to preserve a kind of moral integrity and evade the violence and injustice that have virtually